Progress is Happening

Team,

Thank you for your diligence with supporting students through strong instruction and interventions with acceleration plans.  As we continue the work, below are some leverage items to support your work (some already do these things).  If you do the following you can say with pride that you have high expectations for each of your students.  If you say, "well, the kids can't..., if only the parents...; I'm just happy they wrote something...;for them this is..., then your expectations are LOW.  We can't do low for another second.  Together, we can be great and our students will excel.

• Nothing is more powerful than purposeful instruction and feedback.  
• Classroom Instructional Framework planning supports the "I do, we do, you do" model.  You model, you guide, you provide time for independent practice. 
• The daily formative check (exit slip) is crucial with each lesson.  It aligns the learning to the learning target for students.  It shows you how many students understood the lesson and took away the outcome you planned for.  This feedback allows you to plan for the next day's lesson.
• Providing students with immediate/timely feedback helps them fix mistakes quickly and not continue to make the same mistakes for days/weeks.  This will speed up their learning.
• Tracking progress builds motivations and allows for diagnosis of misconceptions. Just like tracking your food, weight, and exercise leads to greater personal success -- Tracking student progress towards standards, having students track their own progress, and tracking class progress leads to greater success for individual students and the class as a whole.

As always, you are surrounded by support -- if you need help, please say something.  We are growing together and our foot will not move from the gas -- we have to go and we have to build our collective efficacy.  I appreciate the work of everyone as it takes each of us.

Below is a six minute video outlining the new Showcase feature of student digital backpacks.  This is for your information -- this will become part of our work with students.

Please be sure to check the living calendar and daily updates.

Instead of faculty meeting, we have Instructional Leadership Team meeting -- we will meet in room 104.

Please have learning cycle analysis and student work samples to me by Thursday, February 28th.